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Millstone Nuclear Plant Unit Operating Again

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WATERFORD, Conn. (AP) _ The unit shut down by a malfunction at Connecticut’s nuclear power plant is generating electricity again, a spokesman said Thursday.

Millstone Power Station and regulators said Unit 3 shut off automatically last Friday when an instrument failure caused a drop in the level of water used to cool the reactor core.

The 1,200-megawatt unit was reconnected to the regional power grid on Wednesday afternoon, spokesman Ken Holt said. He said it was at about 80 percent power on Thursday morning and expected to reach full power within about a day.

The problem was traced to a faulty power distribution panel, which has since been reconfigured, Holt said.

Millstone provides half of Connecticut’s power. The automatic shutdown was the first at Millstone since last summer, when its other operating unit went offline due to unusually warm water in Long Island Sound.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week that inspectors would follow up on the company’s efforts to diagnose the cause of the malfunction, and the agency will note the unplanned shutdown in its tracking of forced outages.